Computer systems, and servers in particular, form an information backbone upon which companies now rely on almost exclusively for data storage, data mining, and data processing. These systems are indispensable for the improved efficiency and accuracy at processing data as compared to manual human processing. Furthermore, these systems provide services that could not be realistically accomplished by human processing. For example, some computer systems execute physical simulations in hours that would otherwise take decades to complete by human computations. As another example, some computer systems store terabytes of data and provide instantaneous access to any of the data, which may include records spanning decades of company operations.
Monitoring these computers systems is a top priority for their operators and administrators to ensure that the computer systems are continuously available without interruption. These computer systems may demonstrate a coming problem, but if certain parameters of the computer system are not monitored, the corning problem may not be recognized in time for an administrator to take corrective action before a complete failure. For example, data channels in a computer system may experience a reduction in data rate prior to a complete failure of the data channel. However, conventionally there is no monitoring of the data channel data rate. Only after a complete failure would an administrator be alerted to a problem with the data channel, Even then, the administrator would likely not be aware of a problem until several users complained of the data channel failure. Waiting for a total failure of the data channel before taking corrective action causes downtime during which the data channel was unavailable and users were unable to access data.